A photoresist process is one of semiconductor manufacturing processes. In a photoresist process, a resist pattern is formed by coating a surface of a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter, referred to as a wafer) with a resist, exposing the resist in a predetermined pattern, and then developing it to form a resist pattern. A coating and developing apparatus to form the resist pattern includes processing blocks which include processing modules for performing various processes on the wafer.
In the related art, the processing block, for example, is formed by stacking together a unit block to form various coating films such as a resist film and a unit block to perform the developing process. A plurality of fluid treatment modules to perform a coating processing of resist fluid or developing fluid or a plurality of heating modules to perform a heating processing are incorporated in the unit block.
In such coating and developing apparatus, a plurality of unit blocks to perform the same processing on wafers are installed from the viewpoint of improving the throughput. In the related art, when a plurality of unit blocks to perform the same processing are stacked, wafers are discharged to each of unit blocks in sequence, processed in each of the unit blocks, and then unloaded from each of the unit blocks according to the sequence that they are being discharged to each of the unit blocks.
When a module that performs a predetermined processing on the wafer is disabled and there is no other module that performs the same processing in one unit block, it is not possible to continue processing wafers in the upper stream side of the disabled module in the unit block. The wafers in the upper stream is recovered from the coating and developing apparatus and subjected to, for example, a predetermined process (rework process) so as to be in a state of being subjected to coating and developing again, and then loaded into the coating and developing apparatus. However, it is difficult to perform such series of processing and there is a need to reduce the number of wafers (rework wafers) on which the rework process is performed. In addition, a preparing operation is required to change processing conditions of many wafers in response to switching of the lot in some modules. There is a need to reduce the number of times of the preparing operation, thereby reducing the number of the rework wafer while preventing the processing from stagnating.
In the related art, it has been described how to manage a situation where a multi-module performing the same processing on the substrate is disabled. However, it is not sufficient to solve the above-mentioned problem.